This is an archive of stories written by Nick Davies with a separate section on his books. This page displays the most recent stories. Find others through the subject categories or annual list on the right of this page; or use the search engine to find key words in their text.
Published by the Guardian
April 27 2012
Rupert Murdoch is in trouble. In two days as a witness at the Leveson inquiry, he has blocked and blasted, smeared and smiled and, at the end of it, this most powerful of men still has his ankle caught in the snare of scandal. He is vulnerable.
This is a man [...]
Published by the Guardian
April 26 2012
At one point in his evidence yesterday, when he was trying to explain how he dealt with politicians, Rupert Murdoch volunteered: “I’m not good at holding my tongue.” It must drive his advisers crazy.
The plan clearly was for Castle Murdoch to be defended with well-constructed walls of obdurate denial, reinforced [...]
Published by the Guardian
April 25 2012
All of the questions are directed to testing key allegations. References to the activities of Rupert Murdoch should be taken to cover those acting on his behalf.
1. Allegation: that Rupert Murdoch attempted to influence the government’s decision on whether to approve NewsCorp’s bid to take over all of BSkyB.
Although [...]
Published by the Guardian
April 25 2012
Now we come to the dark heart of this strange affair.
Critics of the Murdochs often have suspected that they have exploited their position as newspaper owners to win secret favours from governments – and the Murdochs and the politicians alike have denied it. Now, for the first time, courtesy of [...]
Published by the Guardian
April 25 2012
Sometimes half a dozen confidential texts and emails a day would fly back and forth between the culture secretary’s Cockspur Street office just off Trafalgar Square and the News Corporation team promoting the takeover bid for BSkyB.
It was a remarkable level of apparent intimacy with Jeremy Hunt, the minister who [...]
Published by the Guardian
April 24 2012
All of the questions are directed to testing key allegations. References to the activities of James Murdoch should be taken to cover those acting on his behalf.
1. Allegation: that the Sun’s decision to support the Conservatives at the 2010 election was traded for Tory support for the Murdochs on [...]
Published by the Guardian
April 6 2012
with Dan Sabbagh and Robert Booth
Sky News has admitted one of its senior executives authorised a journalist to conduct email hacking on two occasions that it said were “in the public interest” – even though intercepting emails is a prima facie breach of the Computer Misuse Act, to which there [...]
Published by the Guardian
February 28 2012
The phone-hacking scandal never was simply a story about journalists behaving badly: it was and is about power.
Yesterday, in an outbreak of peculiarly destructive evidence, Lord Justice Leveson’s courtroom became a battle field for two parts of a defining power struggle.
The first was short term. In the past few weeks, [...]
Published by the Guardian
February 21 2012
with Vikram Dodd
A man at the centre of allegations that computers were hacked for the News of the World has been convicted of conspiring to illegally access private information for profit.
Until yesterday legal restrictions meant that what is known about Philip Campbell Smith’s alleged involvement in computer hacking could not [...]
Published by the Guardian
January 30 2012
On Saturday morning, the police arrested four journalists who have worked for Rupert Murdoch. For a moment, it looked like one more step in the death march of the News of the World, but then it became clear that this was something more significant.
This was the moment when the scandal [...]
